November 9, 2010 8:42 am

Dave Boling of The News Tribune says few expected the Seattle Seahawks to be at 4-4 at the midpoint of the season. And even though the Seahawk have been hammered two straight and are dealing with several injuries, fans should embrace the fact that they are atop the NFC West in the playoff hunt.

Boling:

Ignore for a moment the concussed quarterback, the limping linemen and the schedule looming ahead.

Instead, go back a few months, picture your response if someone had told you that the Seahawks would be 4-4 at the midpoint of this season and sharing the lead in the NFC West Division.

Most fans would have taken that in a heartbeat, right? That’s as many wins as they had in the entire 2008 season, and just one shy of the ’09 season total.

Few would have believed it possible at this point, especially if they had known the Hawks would have the 30th-rated offense, the 27th-ranked defense, and were last in the league in first downs.

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About

Gregg Bell joined The News Tribune in July 2014. Bell had been the director of writing for the University of Washington's athletic department for four years. He was the senior national sports writer in Seattle for The Associated Press from 2005-10, covering the Seahawks in their first Super Bowl season and beyond. He's also been The Sacramento Bee's beat writer on the Oakland Athletics and Raiders. The native of Steubenville, Ohio, is a 1993 graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., and a 2000 graduate of the University of California, Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism.

Feeds

I believed they would be 10-6 or, at worst, 9-7 this season so they are actually underperforming in my world. However, with the rash of injuries, it’s going to be a challenge the rest of the way. I don’t know of too many people who think we will beat the Saints in two weeks so the Arizona game this week is going to be huge. I just wish every other team on our schedule had our same injury situation so we could legitimately get to that 10-6 record. That’s about the only realistic way we’re going to get there now. I know they are part of the game, but it’s frustrating when it seems you get the short end of the stick year after year with respect to the injury situation. Dang!

Well what do you know, Pistol fighting his way into the starting lineup. Again. I’m happy for him.

My expectations heading into the season weren’t record related, but it is fun to see them battling for the division, regardless. I’m more concerned with the lack of discernible improvement from Curry, a near complete implosion at RT with Lock and the continued struggles of the secondary. (Trufant and Jennings specifically.) But as they start to get healthy again, I expect them to start playing better everywhere. And starting this Sunday in Arizona.

“This brings up another topic that I think the NFL should look at: Why do QBs take the blame for interceptions that are clearly the WRs fault.

I think there should be a stat an allowed interceptions stat for WRs, so they take the blame.”

That’s part of the reason why I think that there’s an over-reliance on the QB rating stat – which is useful, but not dispositive.

Agree with you on Whitehurst too – way too small a sample, and too tough of a scenario in which he played, to close the book on him. He may not be the guy, but you can’t say that yet based on the one game.

What about tipped balls that receivers come up with or diving one-handed circus catches? Should those completions be credited to the receiver rather than the QB?

Stats and numbers only represent part of a game’s story.

And you may disagree with Clayton but that doesn’t mean he’s a “piece of crap”. He’s a well respected journalist that has covered the Seahawks and the NFL brilliantly for decades. His conclusions may be premature but that doesn’t necessarily mean he’s wrong.

“Trading Josh Wilson was a mistake. Nate Ness made Heyward-Bey look like an All-Pro.

I’m fine with all the other moves that the front office made, though we may have gone too thin at WR.”

Yeah, I agree. Wilson is still and young, and I don’t see why he didn’t fit into the plans one way or the other. I know they liked Thurmond’s potential. But I’m not so sure anymore how many good years Tru has left.

On the WR’s – we are thin and inexperienced, but I still don’t regret letting go of Housh and Branch, Housh would continue to have been an issue in the locker room (and was losing separation speed on the field), and Branch just was never very productive for us. And apart from the 1st game back with NE, he hasn’t been any better for them.

IdahoHawk, true that. It’s just frustrating to see a good player traded when the team isn’t exactly overflowing with talent.

But nothing makes me madder than seeing Cameron Wake, the former BC Lion, thriving as a pass rusher in Miami. He has 8 1/2 sacks and is being projected on the All-Pro team. The Seahawks didn’t even get into a bidding war for him. He would have cost far less than Aaron Curry did. Yes, I know that hindsight is 20/20 but the guy was an absolute monster in the CFL and I would have been surprised if he wasn’t at least a capable backup in the NFL.

Wilson played really really well this past week. I mean, he stood out on a defense that is pretty good. Good for him…and us I spose.

Yeah, I agree…waaay too early to close the book on WH. F that. We give every benefit of the doubt to our slow, old QB, who can’t throw the deep ball, and yet wan’t to write off WH after one questionable start? Clayton…that’s weak homie.

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